A question that has been top of mind for me since exiting RightMessage a few months ago:

To what extent do I want my life to involve me doing things that I don’t (in the moment) want to do?

We use the word ‘want’ to mean two different things: an immediately gratifying ‘want’, and a longer term goal-based ‘want’.

I currently have almost no responsibilities: I’m earning money without doing anything (residual payouts for 14 months after exiting RightMessage and a bit of passive income). I don’t have any dependents.

The first thing I did after the exit was to remove all self-expectation. I didn’t force a gym routine on myself. Or a particular diet. I wanted to see what my baseline behaviours looked like when there was no expectation or discipline. And then build up my optimal life from there.

But, there are certain things that I’d like to change and improve about myself and my situation, and so I’m starting to bring some of those things back in.

I don’t know what optimal looks like. No discipline at all doesn’t work great. But resenting yourself for making yourself do things doesn’t work great either.

Is it just about balancing those two extremes—making improvements but not so much so hard that we burn out and resent it too much?

Is there a golden solution where we come to love the discipline itself and so we, effectively, want to do things we don’t want to do?